Various systems and methods have been proposed for integrating e-mail with postal service regular mail.
An article entitled “How the Postman Almost Owned E-Mail” by Stuart Brotman, Technology Review, Jul. 29, 2002 discusses how the U.S. Postal Service was contemplating a system in January 1982 called E-COM, Electronic Computer-Originated Mail. The article states that E-COM was a message system designed to serve volume mailers, such as Shell Oil and Merrill Lynch, by generating mail from data stored electronically. The service rolled out to 25 post offices and transmitted messages to other cities, which then transformed them into hard copy and delivered them within two days.
An article entitled “Post Office Sees Big Online Opportunity” by Mary Hillebrand, E-Commerce Times, May 27, 1999 discloses a more recent USPS scheme, apparently for use by volume mailers. This article states that with this system, “Mailing Online,” users create a document on their own computer, e-mail the document and their mailing lists to the post office, and pay the post office to print, stuff, and mail the document. The article also mentions similar programs run by Canada Post and France's La Poste.
An article entitled “Postal Service to deliver the e-mail” by Julia Angwin, Wall Street Journal Online, Jul. 30, 2000 discloses Postal Service e-mail accounts and contemplates that a teaser marketing message could come by e-mail followed by a more detailed ad or catalog through paper mail. The article also discusses how, in Britain, the Royal Mail and Microsoft Corp. recently launched a service called Relayone. Postal services in Finland and Switzerland are also planning to print e-mail messages and deliver them.
A Microsoft “PressPass” press release dated May 7, 2001 discusses the ability to create correspondence with customers using “bCentral” services and then transfer that document electronically to the post office for printing and mailing.
A press release by Royal Mail describes the “RelayOne” system in greater detail. The article states, on page 2, that Using RelayOne, documents and telegrams sent from anywhere in the world are received at Royal Mail's Electronic Services Center in London, where they are first printed, put in a distinctive envelope and dispatched by First Class mail. The RelayOne system uses a central location from which regular mail is sent.
What is needed is a system and method for efficiently routing and sorting electronic documents that are to be converted to printed documents.